← Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
From Wall Street to Warrior ft. Rafa J. Conde (Man of War) | Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
00:42:07
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- [00:00]
A
Today, I'm sitting down with the founder and CEO, man of War, a national male empowerment platform with many different divisions under it that's really elevating male leadership across the nation. Please welcome Rafa Condi. Rafa, thanks for jumping on the show today.
- [00:18]
B
Hey, thank you for having me on. It's an honor. Appreciate it.
- [00:21]
A
Absolutely. Thanks. I like to start the show with the same question as Rafa. What's your morning routine?
- [00:27]
B
Oh, boy. I call it the warriors hour four, 30 out of bed, put my feet on the ground. Hey, Grace, thank you for everything that. I have run into a cold shower for two minutes, and then I'd like to do my sitting meditation, usually about 10 minutes, and then I jog over to the gym, do my weightlifting, sometimes cardio, and then run back home and then start the day. No coffee involved in that process?
- [00:49]
A
No coffee. Just straight, you know, mindset stuff. Love that. Love that. How many miles is the gym away?
- [00:59]
B
It's about a mile and a quarter.
- [01:01]
A
Nice. So you get a two and a half mile run in? Yeah, every morning.
- [01:06]
B
Every morning.
- [01:07]
A
Okay, so let's. Let's dive into the questions here. So you were making nearly a million a year on Wall street, and then you decided to walk away from all that. When you decided to walk away, what was the catalyst for that?
- [01:18]
B
Hey, man, every time I hear that, I cringe. Even now still I cringe, you know? So, yeah, that was. I'm in my life, I guess it was a season in my life, really, where I just felt like I needed to serve. 9, 11 just happened. Officers and the firefighters, you know, run up the buildings, and they at risk. And many of them died. And, you know, surrounded these individuals in such a way, they honored them. And I'm like, man, I want to be one of those. I want to do that. I want to serve for a greater purpose. So I. I had been on Wall street as a stock broker for almost a decade at that time, and I said, you know what? Like, I need to do something better. I need to do something that will really change lives, that'll change my life. I need to serve for a higher purpose, as they call it. So I sat down across from my wife and I said, you know what? I want change the trajectory of my life. And really, your life. We've been married just over a year. You're pregnant. We have one. You know, you have one in. We have a son coming. We. This is going to be difficult, but I need to do this. A year after I sat down with her, you know, she agreed. She's like, look, I'm. I'm your ride or die. And from there I was hired by one of the most violent cities in the United States, Riviera Beach Police Department. And well, from there I did 18 and a half years as police officer and most of my career was narcotic undercover. I was assigned to several task forces, including the multi agency Diversion Task Force, the DEA Tactical Diversion Squad. I was part of the Ice Blue Lightning task Force. I was part of different task forces which were local in the community, but across the board. Man, I did a lot of time doing this undercover gig.
- [03:26]
A
Wow. Now, how did your identity start to unravel once you left the money, the status and all the comfort behind?
- [03:35]
B
Well, I was writing it high on Wall Street. I started at a time where you would throw a dart, you know, hit the Wall Street Journal and stocks would go up, especially tech stocks, right. And it was, you know, the time of the chop houses on Wall Street, Times of Jordan, you know, Belford and the Stratton Oakmont and, and firms like that. So, you know, the brokers were highly regarded individuals. They were young guys that were making more than doctors and lawyers, you know, back then.
- [04:10]
A
So.
- [04:11]
B
But I built from, from the ground up, really. I started learning the business model, understanding how to close, understanding the, the really the rhythm of the business, and studied stocks, companies in and out. I studied the, you know, charting, very, very, very. I mean, I was so much. I was highly focused on charting and those technical analysis just brought that fire in me. And well, I built from then, from then on. I mean, I went independent. I had a brokerage firm with 17 brokers, started managing almost approximately $480 million, which probably today would be very close to a billion dollars. And this was active trading money, right? Active. This wasn't the financial consultants save it for 25 years. This was very, very highly active money. So made a lot of money along the way, was a multi million dollar producer for, for many years, had some great relationships. And then all of a sudden, you know, you have a beautiful house, beautiful cars, you pretty much have it all. And you just say, well, you know, screw it all. And I'm gonna go out there now and I'm gonna be a cop for $38,000 a year.
- [05:33]
A
That's crazy. I mean, what is that feeling like to lose your house, your cars, like, you know, a lot of what you thought was the dream at the time, you know, and you had just started a family fresh out of, you know, a prior relationship.
- [05:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's tough, man. That's tough. You say you, you know, house and you lose your cars. Let me be very clear on that. It's not like they just, you know, we, we decided to move away from that. Right. It was more about that actually lost them in foreclosure. I lost my cars and, you know, repossessions. I mean, I was going downhill at 100 miles an hour. The wake up call was when I'm out in the patrol in my patrol car and I get a call from my wife and says, I, I just left Starbucks. I walked out and I don't see my car here. Somebody stole it. That moment I realized that it's not that they stole it, they repossessed that car because I wasn't able to make the payments. Oh, she's there with a little baby in her arms. In her arms. And, you know, I'm sitting there in the patrol car. I really can't do anything about it at that moment. So I had to call my dad. Please go grab her. And it was embarrassing, shameful in many ways for me. I decided to walk down this road and leave everything as far as I knew it behind. But hindsight, looking back at it now, it was very powerful. It was a very powerful transition in my life. I don't think I would be the man that I am today if I didn't go through that.
- [07:23]
A
I just don't understand the logic to leave something like. I know that you knew that there was greater pastors on the other side of what you're doing, and you weren't finding fulfillment, you know, in the space that you were in, but the catalyst to go into something so different and not stay in the financial sector, you know, to pursue something. Was it a dream? Was it a calling?
- [07:50]
B
Yeah, I think more and more than anything, it was a calling. My, My cousin had. Had been part of the DEA task force. He was a cop for Miami PD for a very long time, for the city of Miami, actually. And I admired him since I was very young. And inside of me, I've always had this earth. I went into Wall street not knowing what it was about into. Into the market, being a stockbroker really. But I learned it, I loved it. And at that time, let's put it this way, the love, towards the end of my career, the love of trading and, and, you know, making money and, and just it became. It was so up and down with the market at that time. I remember the market crashed and then it went back up, and then it was just, it was a. It was all over the place, and it started to wear on me. And then you get to the point where you question, right, your ethics, because you're like, hey, man, I need to bring home a paycheck for my family, right? Okay. I can't go, you know, months and months without commissions when this market. So, you know, you get into this, this mindset where you're thinking, man, I gotta move money. I have, I gotta create. I gotta figure, I have to. So it just didn't sit right with me. And I felt like moving in this direction I knew was gonna be tough, man. I knew it. But moving in this direction, it was going to change me as a man. It was going to help me become really the man that I felt that I could be. Because I felt like I was lacking some of that edge. I've never really been tested too much. I, I was always part of the martial arts world. I studied it for a very long time, training, training and training, but I really, really was never tested in, in the realities of life. And being a cop, boy, it woke me up.
- [09:53]
A
You know, if you could go back, like, what's one moment? Because law enforcement's crazy, I'm sure in Miami, what's one. That's where I got Miami pd, right? But what's one moment from your early law enforcement career that tested your resolve or broke you wide open?
- [10:10]
B
Oh, my goodness.
- [10:13]
A
I mean, sure, there's a lot.
- [10:14]
B
But you know, my friend, I could sit here and tell you so many pivotal points in my career that changed my life. Everything from, you know, having a, a young man's head, you know, on my aunt. On my hands like this, right? And he's breathing, his brain is partly blown out, his head is, you know, and this kid's just looking at me and gargling and looking at my, my face. And I'm the last person that he ever sees before he dies. And, you know, this is a response to a drive by shooting in a house, right? And you're there and you're thinking, my God, like, this is, this is, this is real. This is raw. This is happening. And things like that, you know, they, they freak you out. You know, been in gunfight, been in situations where, you know, you're chasing people in the middle of the night, two, three o' clock in the morning, and you're there fighting. You know, the guy has a handgun. You're trying to fight in the middle of an alleyway, and your backup, it's, you know, two, three minutes away, which is an eternity, right? You know, I did a lot of stupid things as a rookie. And that's, you know, I had a lot of energy. I mean, I would be out there two, three o' clock in the morning, jumping fences, chasing guys, going into the worst parts of a neighborhood. And we worked at a very low socio economic class neighborhood. It was predominantly a black area and it was just funky stuff, man. I look back and I'm like, wow, I did all that. That's crazy. I would never do that again.
- [11:41]
A
You made it through. You made it through. That sounds unreal, what you, what you experienced, but I'm sure that that wisdom in that journey has been a big catalyst to starting man of War. It's like, tell me a little bit about like what is man of War? And let the audience know what it is, how you serve men and how they should get involved.
- [12:09]
B
Well, I was a police academy instructor for over 10 years and I love teaching the police academy. I taught high liability, I taught firearms. And it was a very, for me, it was a very, was a great experience for me to give back. But what I started to see was that the young men that were coming through the police academy were weaker and weaker and women, right off the bat, they were stronger than men. I mean, they were doing things that most men were not able to do that were coming to the police academy. So I stopped for a moment and I started thinking, man. What about the warrior spirit in a man, right? The fight, the, the, the desire, the ambition, the, the, the protective nature in a man. So I started a podcast, man of War podcast. And this is back in 2017. And it took off. It was, you know, in society and noteworthy. It was up there and for eight weeks it was, it did great. A lot of people started emailing me, DMing me, I started speaking about, you know, my philosophy of how a man should be this planet, how he should live. And there's a lot of programs out there that focus on, you know, building more masculine men and we focus on forging men into, into, excuse me, into warriors. So, so these men that I built from the ground up, a lot of these men were missing. A lot of these men were missing the, the edge. They were missing the. How do I say it? The, the certain drive in their, in their minds and their bodies and their, so they were missing really discipline and the situation really that happened to me when I was in this particular police academy. I started talking to men and they didn't even know what a warrior spirit was about. They didn't even understand what really.
- [14:39]
A
Being.
- [14:40]
B
A warrior was all about, what battle what really survival on the street was all about. But the bottom line is that. Thank you. And I need this here next to me at all times, please. The certain battle, the, these individuals didn't get that and these were cops that were moving forward in, in the streets, but they didn't have that edge. So what I started doing was focusing on forging these men into warriors, giving them the discipline, giving them a code, giving them a way of life, having them, they can overcome the most difficult challenges in life, push themselves beyond their self imposed limits to get around great men, to surround themselves with greatness. And you know, we started building these warriors for business also from a perspective of, look, you know, you're entrepreneurs, you go out there, you build empires, you forge forward, you learn how to negotiate, you learn how to have command presence, you learn how to enter a room and own it. I mean, I can go on and on. So the bottom line is it was more than anything else, it was more about the warrior spirit rather than masculinity. It was about redefining and re energizing that. So from there, you know, I built a, a, a very strong following of, of men who were really focused on resurgence of that warrior spirit. Wrote a book, a best selling book. And it, from there it, you know, it's taken off. So that is our philosophy here really, to forge warriors.
- [16:18]
A
I love that, you know, and the reality is every successful entrepreneur is a warrior. There's no way you're not, you know, someone who has warrior spirit engraved in you and you're a successful entrepreneur. Every person I've had on my podcast is a warrior because they fought the good fight to get to where they're at. The caveat the hardest part about that and you, this is probably the solve that you had with the, the group that you have for sons is we get to a level of success because we had to fight. We come from poverty, we come, we're immigrants and yada, yada, and then our sons are born in abundance and they don't have the same fight. So how do we teach that warrior spirit to the next generation who don't have to fight like we did?
- [17:11]
B
Yeah. I believe you have to build a strategic structure in your home that have a framework. Right. You have to be able to say, hey, listen, look, times now, you know, we came up at a different time. We had to put in the time, the work, the effort. We didn't have someone holding our hands. So sure, you want to help your kids out as a father, but the best way you can guide your Kids is to give them little pieces, okay, and let them figure out the other side. So one of the things that I, you know, I've always told my sons is, listen, I'm going to give you, you know, maybe 30%. You're going to have to figure the other 70% out yourself, okay? But you know, you give them a push, right? You give them because out of love you want them to succeed, but at the same time, out of love, sometimes you have to want them to fail too, because that's the only way that they're going to learn. You know, we talk about, you know, successes all the time. Everybody wants to, you know, ring the bell. Success, success, success. But wait a minute. You know, really what defines a man in the end is his struggles. And I will argue this all day long because, you know, I have metrics and analytics. I've coached over 10,000 men, probably 11,000 men at this point. And I can tell you that every man that has made anything of himself has gone through extremely difficult situation in his life. It doesn't matter where, relationships, business, you know, parenting, you know, maybe vices, you know, from drinking and drugs, they've overcome a tremendous amount. Now, you know, the, the thing that we have going on in our world right now, unfortunately, is that everybody wants, you know, know, you know, a piece of cheese, you know, and for free. Hey, let's catch on the way up. No, sometimes you have to build it on the way down. And unfortunately, you know, it hurts because that's when you start losing. That's when you start feeling uncomfortable. You start realizing that, man, maybe you're not putting in the time and the effort, but I believe that when you rip a man's soul from him and you give him the opportunity to rise up, he'll be the strongest version of himself times a hundred.
- [19:32]
A
Now let me ask you this. You rose to the swat, the narcotics, federal ops. What did those experience teach you about leadership under those extreme pressure situations?
- [19:43]
B
You name it. I mean, you, I mean, we're talking about deleting from front, making sure that your head is on a swivel, dotting your eyes, crossing your T. Your T's obviously organization crucial, making sure that you can. This is probably one of the biggest delegation, right? Sometimes as a leader, you don't want to delegate anything because you think you can do it better than anyone. But in reality, you can't do everything. So you're going to have to figure your way out. So delegation, making sure that everyone knows their expectations. You know, these are all critical components of really building, you know, yourself up as a leader and really being. Being able to lead a squad, right? And I would say, number one thing, make sure that everybody knows your mission, right? Because we have so many great leaders out there. They're great. They'll lead people, but nobody really knows their mission, and that's a lack of communication. So a good leader communicates his mission. What is the objective? What are the goals? How are we getting there? That way, everybody's on the same page. And when you're able to do that, when you have that capability, man, you are. Let's put it this way, you have grown to be a very, very strong leader.
- [21:13]
A
Now let's. Let's dive into the biggest misconception people have about masculinity. How does man of war challenge that?
- [21:23]
B
Well, misconception there is that there is such thing as toxic masculinity. Let's get real for a moment, okay? Just go back in time. You know, men have built this planet from the ground up. And I respect women to the point where, you know, I mean, I have a daughter, and, you know, my wife is an unbelievable woman. She's supportive, she's on my side. She pushes me, she holds me accountable. But the reality is that, you know, you as a man, build a framework in your home, and you are the protector and you are the provider, and your family is going to rely on you. The moment that a man, which in my opinion is the king of his castle, abdicates his role as a king, okay, he passes down that role to his wife. And there is in no way, shape or form that a woman can and should lead a household with the man inside that household. It's. It's completely backwards. And we've seen relationships completely fall apart because of that. So what we do here and why people are sometimes critical of what we do is that we give men the crown back. We give them the opportunity to be kings, to rise up, to lead their families. Now, keep in mind that we don't give it to them just because we say they're men. We give it to them because they've earned it. And once they earn that crown, they could go home and start leading from the front with love, with tenderness, but at the same time, with conviction and drive and power. And if you can balance that type of masculinity, you're going to have a thriving, very, very thriving relationship and be able to be a great father.
- [23:19]
A
I mean, it's. It's. It's hard to balance that now because we're in this, like, really, you know, misconstrued society where there's a balancing act between toxic, masculine. You don't want to be too toxic. You know, you don't, you know, this hyper political environment, not so much in Florida, but like here in California, where you, you're masculine. Masculinity, you gotta just kind of tread lightly, you know, you. Or you're gonna upset a lot of people.
- [23:45]
B
Yes.
- [23:45]
A
And as leaders, like I'm a CEO, like, you know, there's a balancing act for me, you know, because being a public figure, even you just can't. You can't do too much to express your masculinity. How do you, you know, ex. Teach your leaders to kind of balance that to where it's not defensive?
- [24:11]
B
Well, see, this is where me and you're going to be a little bit. We're going to have different angles of attack here. I, I don't think that you express your masculinity intentionally. Okay. I think that it becomes part of who you are. Right. Yeah, right. The, The. The. The moment that you start trying to refrain or back down from your masculinity, I just think you do yourself a huge disservice. Now, obviously, a leader has to have that balance that you're talking about. I think that you can't be overly aggressive. Just look at, you know, the way that Abraham Lincoln led. I mean, he was a very masculine alpha male, but, you know, you never saw him really scream or you never saw him get out of whack. But he was very poignant in the way that he spoke. Very direct, very articulate. He would straighten you up really, really quickly, but he did it with finesse. I think what we are missing here and in masculinity is more of that type of finesse. Right. The way that we articulate ourselves, the way that we carry ourselves. I think that there's a misconception that masculine alpha males are tattooed guys with beards and muscles. And, you know, they're, they're just like kind of apes running around and being roided out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but that's not at all what, you know, I, I rather. This is the way that I rather think of. Of. I model like a man. If you look at, you know, like Sean Connery, 007, guys like, you know, John Wayne, guys like, even in the modern world, like guys like John Wick. Right. He's a savage, but he's able to also be controlled in another side. You know, it just seems to me sometimes that people get. They just ride each other's bandwagon. And you know that that leaves a lot to be desired, especially in our world here. Now, I know California is actually another world. I know that, you know, there, there's a different type of thinking, but it's just not now. It's been around. It's been like that for 30 years, 40 years, and it's. I have a lot of friends that live there. And I think that for the most part, we need stronger, masculine role models in positions of authority so people can see that they are not like this toxic type of people that, you know, that, that they think that they typically are, you know, like right now, if you look at, you know, the President, like him or not like, you know, masculine, everything masculine and toxic or whatever, I don't know. Look, you know, that's up to you. That's whatever you think. But, you know, bottom line is that we need to get into a position where a man carries his weight. A woman has no business being the protector and provider in her household.
- [27:22]
A
I saw the funniest meme of Donald, Donald Trump put it on. The real Donald Trump of him making like, Gavin Newsom like this pansy, just like hitting the, the boxing bag. Like, you know, like a girl, like, you know, yeah, it's pretty funny, me, but I'm like, that's California for you. You know, like with, you know, it was a, it was a. I don't want to say, you know, but you get the feeling, you know, a face of Gavin Newsom. It was a meme and it was like a girl swinging at a, you know, a girl body swinging at a punching bag. And it was pretty funny, but it was pretty indicative of the state of California that we're in. Like, when I say the state, that mindset, I mean mindset that the, you know, a lot of California residents have currently, we're in a hyper liberal society. A lot of people don't want to work. You got a lot of people that don't know what gender they are, what sex they are. It's a very confused place.
- [28:22]
B
Have you always been there in California?
- [28:24]
A
Yeah, I love California. I'm in Newport Beach. It's a secular. It's. We're really separated.
- [28:29]
B
Yes.
- [28:30]
A
We're like, we're like Florida here.
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. Very different there, for sure.
- [28:33]
A
It's very different. Ultra Republican. But you go down the street to la and I don't even let my kids step foot in la, you know.
- [28:40]
B
But let me ask you, let me ask you a question. Is it because, you know, this is what I. For A while, yeah. Okay. Is it because the people that live there have this, this mind shift? I mean, because I think about it, it's like you have to vote that governor in over and over again. People have to vote him in.
- [29:08]
A
Yeah, well, it's a, it's, you know, it's, it's a liberal state. You know, people are liberal here. They don't want to work, they don't want to, you know, like the employment laws are all for, you know, condone laziness and you know, ultra high taxes. I mean, we pay a weather tax, but it's extensive and it's, you know, we try to, it's, it's like, you know, it's kind of a socialist society for a lot of it. It's, it's. You know, I personally feel that the fires that happened in LA were divine intervention to wake LA up.
- [29:42]
B
Wow.
- [29:42]
A
You just burn an entire city, you know, like.
- [29:45]
B
Yeah.
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A
And you know, I think that was God talking to la.
- [29:50]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:51]
A
Saying wake up, you know, Wake up, you know, and stop living like Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, or I will burn this place down. And, and he was about to.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah, but I know he was about to.
- [30:05]
A
I mean, he burned cities. He burned the richest people in la. The people actually that didn't deserve it. Those are the, you know, those are the people that were the most Republican, the most, like a lot of them were very God fearing. I have a lot of them now are in Newport now. They all moved here, so. But the Palisades was the most abundant city in Los Angeles and.
- [30:26]
B
Wow. Wow. Yeah, were, I have many friends, I have a few friends, I live in San Diego in that area. A couple of them that live in Freeport and another, another one that lives in, in LA right now. He's about to move. You know, I just interviewed Frank Stallone a couple of weeks ago.
- [30:49]
A
You know, that's Sylvester Stone's brother.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah. What's his opinion? He's, oh, he said again, what's his.
- [30:57]
A
Opinion about where he lives or is.
- [30:59]
B
Boy, he destroyed, he destroyed it for, for half an hour. He's attacking California and the governors and the Democrats and the liberals and, and you know, la, how it's completely different than what it was, you know, years ago and he can't walk out of his house. I mean, I'm like, wow, wow.
- [31:22]
A
And that's, Is that Sylvester's opinion too?
- [31:25]
B
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, that's, you know, they're, they're, they're connected, you know, they're Very close. And that's, that's for sure. A lot of people that live there, you know, they, you know, they. Because it is a beautiful. I mean, take, take all the crap away. And it is a beautiful state, man. Like, it's beautiful, right?
- [31:46]
A
Yeah. The political environment, lousy.
- [31:49]
B
Yeah.
- [31:50]
A
And I know Sylvester's conservative, as is Arnold Schneger, and these guys are, you know, I mean, I. Sylvester should run for governor. I mean, Grant Cardone was going to run for governor here. I thought he was gonna.
- [32:02]
B
Interesting.
- [32:03]
A
I, I was, I was so pumped, you know, because he's just like, he's great.
- [32:09]
B
He will, he will clean it up.
- [32:13]
A
He'Ll clean house. And he was gonna make a run. He was doing a tour and, you know, he didn't formally announce it. He was just getting a lot of people to kind of voice their, you know, their backing. So he. Who knows, he still might make a run for it.
- [32:28]
B
Do you think he has some support over there?
- [32:30]
A
Oh, yeah, dude, we need. I just don't know. You see, I know all the, you know, from what I saw, there's a lot of backing, but then there's just so many people that are kind of degenerates. There's more degenerates in California.
- [32:45]
B
Yeah.
- [32:46]
A
Than any other state. There's, you know, tens of millions of them.
- [32:50]
B
Yeah.
- [32:50]
A
You know, I only know the abundant affluent ones, apparently. You know, there are those that are doing well in society, those. Listening to this podcast.
- [33:01]
B
Have you seen a lot of people move out of LA and in that area?
- [33:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, I saw a lot of friends, a lot of other entrepreneurs. I mean, they'll move to like, Arizona. They'll move, you know.
- [33:10]
B
Yeah.
- [33:11]
A
Texas, Florida is a big state people are moving to because it kind of has the same weather and yeah, we.
- [33:19]
B
We, we initially was like, man, we California play team. We're like, get out. But then we start realizing is that the people that are coming here are actually pretty, pretty conservative. You know, I just don't want to be in that environment anymore.
- [33:32]
A
Yeah. But again, I'm sheltered. I'm in Newport Beach, Irvine, Orange county for the most part, versus very conservative. So, yeah, you know, but Newport is hyper conservative. Very. This is where Trump visits, you know.
- [33:48]
B
So, yeah, I have, I deal with the Lamborghini dealership there a lot. So they're the, you know, they're, they're people there. Everyone that I've ever met there.
- [33:59]
A
Yeah. So hard working. Yeah. We don't mess around. Everyone loves God, Everyone. Let me ask you, what does faith play in your Position, you know, like, huge. How important is faith? You know, everything.
- [34:12]
B
I mean, I got to tell you, you know, my wife's a pastor. Her father is a. Is a pastor, very well known under Derek Prince Ministries. I mean, you know, everything for me, it's. It's literally, it's life without getting cringier or whatever. You know, some guys. Yeah, listen, I. I'll. I'll get down on my knees and I'll pray very much about connecting myself as close to God as possible. And I believe that, you know, everything that I do, you know, and I always talk and I always say this, you know, all the glory goes to God, you know, no matter cars, houses, money, trips, great times, all that, all the glory, you know, only blessed because of him.
- [35:04]
A
Yeah, I've been pretty vocal. You know, I'm Coptic Orthodox. We're the first Christian people are. And I came to America because of religious asylum, you know, because we were being persecuted and killed off in Egypt. So I used to kind of shout it from the rooftops under the Biden administration that I'm Coptic, I'm Christian, you know, because I would relate it like, well, the transgender people get to do it, they get to raise their flag. And sure, you know, I got the right to do it. So I didn't care about the backlash. Now it's like, thankfully, it's a much more accepted. I don't have to, like, raise my. My Christian flag as much, but. But I'm pretty vocal about it because, you know, I do everything to serve God. My whole purpose, my objective, you know, my life. People are like, why does God bless you so much? Because, like, I just. I'm here to serve. Yeah, that's. I exist for one reason. I don't care about money, I don't care about notoriety, I don't care about the accolades and God just gives them. And then what happens? I gotta, like, figure out how to use these resources to give back.
- [36:12]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great mindset we have.
- [36:17]
A
The more God is, the more I have to give back.
- [36:20]
B
Yeah, we have a good Coptic community here in Boca. Good people, a good friend. Yeah, yeah. This guy, George Soreal, he's a good guy. He's a. He was a actual Donald Trump's executive vice president. He was an attorney for him for over 10 years. And so we have a nice community here. Good people.
- [36:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, uh, the. The Coptics, you'll always notice. And we do a Copticon annually. It's in. It's in Boca. So we always have a bunch of Coptic entrepreneurs fly out there. Yeah, I mean the cops, people you always see because, because they put God first, they're always successful. There's no like, there's no science here. It's just fact. You put God first and he will bless you. It's a hundred percent certain in America now you could be in Kenya or a third world and have no resources or no means. And unfortunately, and those are the people that love God the most, but they just don't have the ability to become abundant. But those that serve God here first, but God here first, there's no people like, why are copy people so successful? It's because they love and serve and do God's work.
- [37:34]
B
You mentioned abundance, which is great. That having. If we have a state of mind, an abundant state of mind. It just, you know, for me it's, it's, it's about just getting man, just giving, you know, and somehow you. I give and, and it all comes back. It's just a weird, it's just funny how life works, man.
- [37:57]
A
I got a couple last questions for you, Rafa. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself, A family goal that you have for your family and a business goal that you have for man of war?
- [38:11]
B
Personal goal. I want to reach a million. That's my goal. To actually change lives and connect with a million men. By the time I'm, you know, may make my transition out of man of war or I pass away or move on to the, you know, to the other side. The when it comes to family, I want to make sure that my son finishes law school. My daughter, she's going to be 13 now, coming up. And these are important part times in my life where I'm transitioning, my kids now to almost start, you know, being on, you know, my son's in college and then my, my youngest, my daughter now she's probably going to transition and she's into high school. And then it's just going to be me and my wife while the kids are out of the house. So we are. One of our goals, for one, when me and my wife are, is to travel the world. We really want to travel to different places. We have not had the opportunity to do so because my law enforcement career and I just retired just over four years ago. So we haven't traveled as much as we wanted to travel. So it's time in the next four, five years, my goal is to say, hey, let's go. Let's take a couple of months. We're going to go around the world Love that. Now, from a business perspective, I want to expand our territory. Right now we've expanded into Latin America. We are, we've basically, we are executing in so many, so many countries in Latin America. But the next step now we're moving into Europe and we're going to take Europe by storm. So that's my focus coming up here over the next three years.
- [40:01]
A
Love to hear that. That's great. Global expansion, baby. Let's go. Last question. When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you?
- [40:12]
B
He's going to say, rafa, you know, you've been a man who lives with great conviction. You have screwed up many times over and over and over and over again. But in your heart, heart, you've always honored me in everything that you have done. And I believe that's truly the way that I've lived my life. Not perfect in any way, shape or form, very far from it. But my life has been to honor my Savior.
- [40:45]
A
I love that. And I love that. God bless you. I hope you hit every single one of your goals. And the Lord continues to bless you beyond measure, abundantly.
- [40:55]
B
Thank you very much.
- [40:55]
A
Family. If people want to find you, how do they found find you?
- [41:01]
B
Rafaj, you know, you can find me pretty much anywhere. Instagram, Facebook, Tick tock, you know, all over. You look for Men of War Cross Crucible, that's me. N of War Crucible, that's our program. You can go to Manobor us. M A N O F W A R dot us. That's our website. And you'll see our programs, our culture development strategies. And you know, we give a lot. You know, we. We're not just taking, we're not asking you to join anything. We just give you a lot of things that you can use for your life right off the bat for free. Okay. And then if you want to do, do, do your thing with us and we'll welcome you in if you're the right fit.
- [41:40]
A
Love it. Thanks, Rafa. It's been absolute pleasure. I look forward to having you back on the show. God bless you, man.
- [41:46]
B
Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.